Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The gap between knowing death intellectually and truly feeling its reality is the heart of this teaching. Ven Sanghy Khandro guides practitioners through three contemplative points designed to close that gap: death befalls everyone, from historical figures to ordinary people we’ve known; our lifespan continuously shrinks with each passing moment, like an unstoppable train bearing us toward our destination; and what matters most — spiritual practice especially — may go unfinished if we postpone. Rather than morbid dwelling, this 9.4-minute meditation aims to transform detached belief into lived urgency. By repeatedly contemplating our own mortality, we move from intellectual assent to a visceral understanding that can actually rewire how we spend our days and where we place our effort.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1.12 Nine Point Meditation on Death Part 1.mp3
UUID: 82304f6f-2d6f-48b7-aa1d-7af915a3fe5f
Teacher: Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald
Collection: Heart advice (Ven Sanghy Khandro aka Kathleen McDonald)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 9.4 minutes
Words: ~1,342
So the main idea in this part of the meditation, meditating on the inevitability or certainty of death, is that we need to realize that death is definitely going to happen to us. We’re definitely going to die one day. And you might think, Well, I know that. I don’t need to meditate on that. However, even though we may have knowledge, the intellectual understanding that we’re going to die one day, we may not really feel that way when it comes to the way we feel about ourselves, way we feel about our life, and also the way in which we live our life.
We tend to live our life as if it’s going to go on forever, as if we’re going to be here forever. We normally don’t think about our life coming to an end. We don’t make plans for that. We don’t prepare for that other than buying life insurance, arranging for a funeral and burial, making a will and so on. So those kind of things are dealing more with the the practical aspects of death and dying.
But when it comes to our emotional life, our spiritual life, it’s very hard for us to really conceive of ourselves as going out of existence, as not being here anymore. In fact, Elizabeth Kubler Ross, is one of the founders of the hospice movement, in one of her books says that it’s impossible for human beings to conceive of their own mortality. I think Tibetan lamas and Buddhist teachers wouldn’t agree with that. It’s not completely impossible to accept that we are mortal, that we’re going to die. But it’s extremely difficult.
Our mind, I think, has this tendency to not want to go there, to not want to think about that, not want to really acknowledge that. So that’s why it’s important for us to contemplate this, to meditate on the fact that we are going to die one day. So that we drive that point home very deeply in our mind. And come to see ourselves as mortal beings. A being who is going to go out of existence at some point.
And so there are three points that we meditate on here. The first is contemplating that death is something that happens to everyone. Any person, any being who is born inevitably has to die. And so, here we can think of people from the past, historical figures. We can think of famous people such as presidents, kings, prime ministers, or generals, conquerors, or we can think of artists, people who had incredible talent to produce beautiful music, or beautiful works of poetry and writing or art, beautiful pieces of art and so on.
We can think of great geniuses, scientists, philosophers, scholars. We can also think of just ordinary people. The many billions of people who aren’t necessarily famous or great at anything, but just went about their lives, were born and grew up and went to school, started to work, got married, had families, grew old and died. So we can think about the people who lived in the past. Billions of people who have already been born and lived and died on this planet.
And then remind ourselves that just as they died, I too will have to die one day. Death will happen to me. And then it’s also very helpful to think of people we ourselves have known. From the time we were born until now. Family members, friends at school, teachers, people we worked with, neighbours.
Just people we ourselves had contact with, had a relationship with, people who have already passed away. And again, remind ourselves, Just as those people died, I too will have to die one day. Death will happen to me. We can also ask ourselves if we can come up with an example of a person who didn’t have to die. Someone who was born and lived and just went on living and never died.
Mean, there are such stories in fairy tales and science fiction movies and so forth. But in reality, if we were really to go around the world and check out the human beings who are alive, could we find anyone who has managed to live on and on and on and not have to die? So, death is something that happens to everyone. And that means me. I too will have to die.
And then the second point in meditation is to think about how our lifespan is decreasing continuously. Time never stops, never stands still. It’s going on every moment. So moment by moment, time goes on. And as time goes on, we are getting closer and closer to death.
There will be a time there in the future when we will die. And it’s as though we are getting closer to that time all the time. Every moment, every minute, every day, every month, every year. It can be helpful to contemplate being on a train. Imagine ourselves being on a train, and this train never stops, it never slows down, it’s just continuously moving at a steady speed, bringing us closer and closer to our destination.
And in this case, the destination is death, the end of our life. So get a sense of this unceasing movement as we go through life, and closer to the end of our life. It’s not possible to change direction, to go in some other direction. It’s not possible to stop the process of time and aging, moving closer to death. So, we’re just moving continuously closer and closer to death.
And the third point is to contemplate that if there is something that we find important and valuable to do in life, something that we feel, I really have to make time for this. I really have to do this. I really want to finish this in my life. It’s possible that our life could pass before we finish that. Now, in the context of Buddhism, and in particular the Lam Rim, the path to enlightenment teachings, this is looked at with regard to spiritual practice, which is regarded as a very important thing, the most important thing to do in life.
So it’s possible that we may think it’s important to do some spiritual practice, but then we keep putting it off, we postpone it. We get busy doing many other things and never get around to doing spiritual practice. So it’s possible that our life could end before we find time to do spiritual practice. We can see that in just ordinary things. Sometimes people begin some project and then death happens to them before they finish the project.
We have lots of examples of unfinished works, unfinished works of art, or music or writing. Unfinished buildings. Someone has started building a house or started building a cathedral or some other important building and then they die before they finish it. So just with regard to ordinary things in life, death doesn’t wait. Death doesn’t wait for us to finish things that we start before it happens to us.
Sometimes people even die in the middle of eating a meal. They don’t even manage to finish the food that’s on their plate and they die before that. So, that happens just with ordinary things. And it can also happen with regard to something as important as spiritual practice. So, if we have the wish to engage in spiritual practice, we would make a mistake if we were to think that death will wait for us.
It may not. So if we feel it’s important to engage in spiritual practice, learn meditation, work on your mind, learn to tame your anger, give up some bad habits that you have. It’s it’s important to start working on those things now and not postpone doing those things and end up never getting around to it. So those are the three points. Can pause here and have a short break.
And then we’ll begin the meditation on the inevitability of death.